There’s already been plenty of comment on Facebook’s plan to refocus the news feed on personal messages. My take is it’s a clever defensive move to relinquish power over public opinion before national governments grab the company to secure that power for themselves. After all, being nationalized is bad for business and Facebook’s only real purpose is to make money. As it should be.
Customer engagement vendor Usermind has raised a $23.5 million Series C funding. Usermind assembles a unified customer profile by reading data directly from source systems, although it does keep a persistent copy of some portions. That puts it right on the border of CDP-land. It uses the data to orchestrate customer journeys.
We haven’t heard much yet about fraud in addressable TV ads but you can bet it’s coming.
It’s tough to get brand safety right, but the industry keeps trying. IPG Mediabrands announced a new set of tools to find and block inappropriate ad placements, while IAS expanded its suitability measurements to include standards from the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). Meanwhile, DoubleVerify admitted a mistake made brand safety on X/Twitter look worse than it really was in October 2023 and March 2024.